Book Notes

By Mary B. W. Tabor

Published: November 29, 1995

Posthumous Revelations

Just days before the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in Nigeria this month, an act that was internationally condemned, his son handed a computer disk to a friend and asked that its contents be made public.

The disk was taken to London, where a printout was made of a file detailing Mr. Saro-Wiwa's detention by the Government and the struggle between the Ogoni tribe, of which he was a member, and the Royal Dutch/Shell group. Mr. Saro-Wiwa, 54, an environmental advocate, had spoken out against the Nigerian Government in his campaign for a greater share of oil profits for the Ogoni and for compensation for damage to tribal lands. (His book "Genocide in Nigeria: The Ogoni Tragedy" was published in 1992.)

With the help of Ed Victor, a prominent literary agent in London, Mr. Saro-Wiwa's last written words are to be published today by Penguin as "A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary." The Penguin Group bought the English-language rights for $35,000.

"We're working at desperate speed," said Peter Mayer, Penguin USA's chief executive. He said the company would donate a portion of the royalties to a Saro-Wiwa memorial fund.

Mr. Victor said he found the diary unusually moving. "It's a very strong, clear, stable voice," he said, adding that Mr. Saro-Wiwa had ended his account with references to other hardships endured by his tribe. "But that's another story," Mr. Saro-Wiwa wrote, "if I live to tell the tale."

First serial rights to "A Month and a Day" have been sold to The Observer in London, which is to begin running installments on Sunday, Mr. Mayer said.

In the meantime, Mr. Victor has found two other files on the disk: a novel and a collection of short stories.

Scholarly Output

In recent years many university presses have picked up where traditional publishers have left off, publishing neglected literary novels and other general-interest books in addition to their usual fare of scholarly tracts.

Now, in a turnabout of sorts, Simon & Schuster is hoping to pick up where academic presses have left off. The company has announced that it will overhaul the trade imprint Lexington Books, turning it into a direct-mail imprint by scholars for scholars called the New Lexington Press. New Lexington, formerly under the Free Press's auspices, will be an imprint for the publisher's Jossey-Bass division.

"It's going against the grain," said Lynn Luckow, president and publisher of Jossey-Bass. "But we expect this to be a major publishing venue for us."

Among Lexington Books' more popular titles are "When Growing Up Hurts Too Much," by Scott O. Harris and Edward N. Reynolds, and "Marketing to Generation X," by Karen Ritchie.

By contrast, one of New Lexington's first titles, to be published next year, will be "Psychological Perspectives on Environmental and Ethical Issues in Management," by Max H. Bazerman, a professor at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, at Northwestern University.

In addition to books on management and psychology, New Lexington will also publish studies about philanthropies and nonprofit entities, like education, art and advocacy groups.

Food-for-Thought Channel

It was during a casual lunch conversation with his lawyer two years ago that E. L. Doctorow first came up with the idea for Booknet, a 24-hour cable television channel devoted to books.

"We were talking about the explosion of cable channels, and I said there should be a channel for informing the public about the imaginative and intellectual life of this country as it is conducted in books," said Mr. Doctorow, whose novels include "Ragtime" and "Billy Bathgate."

Now, after months of wrangling, meetings, starts and stops, the channel is set to go on the air next fall with author interviews, panel discussions, publishing news and readings. The channel will also offer a shopping service for highlighted books.

Burton Pines, the former chief executive of NET's Political NewsTalk Network, is the new president of Booknet Inc. Several prominent authors, among them Margaret Atwood, Galway Kinnell, Arthur Miller and George Plimpton, serve on its advisory board.

Start-up costs for the channel are estimated at about $40 million, and while Mr. Doctorow and three Booknet co-founders have provided seed money for the project, overall financing has not been secured. Within three years, according to plans, the channel will pay for itself through advertising and book sales.

Though invigorated by the project, Mr. Doctorow said he would be relieved to return to writing full time.

"I want to see this happen," he said. "Then I want to go back to my study, close the door and get back to work. I realize now how wise I was as a young man when I elected to be a writer. There are no meetings, no conferences, and a great deal of solitude.

"But this has all begun to work, and I think it can be a marvelous way to arrest the general decline in reading and promote the culture of literacy that is so essential to us. It's just a matter of spreading the word."

A Conquering Hero

In his memoir "Return With Honor" (Doubleday), Capt. Scott O'Grady recalled his grueling six days of leaf- and ant-eating after being shot down over Bosnia last June. Such heroics have apparently touched the hearts of America's bachelorettes, who have flocked to the fighter pilot's book signings.

Asked about the crowds, Captain O'Grady, who wrote the book with Jeff Coplon, first said that "a lot of grandmothers" had stopped by. But he added that there had been "more young ladies than I expected."

"It used to be pretty hard to get a date," said the 30-year-old pilot during a stop in Los Angeles. "Now it's not that hard anymore. I've had more proposals on this tour than I've had in a lifetime."

At one airport, a woman proposed as he waited for his luggage. "I laughed," he said. "But she was serious."

Such enthusiasm for Captain O'Grady, who is now in the Air Force reserves, has been a boon in book terms as well. "Return With Honor" has 200,000 copies in print. On Dec. 10, it will appear at No. 10 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.

Virtual Browsing

Publishers have been racing to figure out how to make the most of the Internet, setting up Web sites in which browsers can see listings of new titles, read author profiles and buy books with a simple click.

In one of the most elaborate efforts to date, the Putnam Berkley Group is starting a "Bookstore Cafe" on Monday in cyberspace where 125 books can be pulled up, looked over and ordered. Some 60 to 80 new titles are to be added each month to the virtual bookstore.

Elegant graphics, super-search capabilities and easy movement forward, backward and around the bookstore (which has a special area for young readers) will be the Web site's major attractions.